from the throne, and placed the sceptre in the hand of his daughter Berenice. To defend themselves still further against the intrigues of Rome, they proposed to marry their young sovereign to the King of Syria,-hoping that the combined forces of the two kingdoms would prove more than a match for the legions usually stationed beyond the Hellespont. But the premature death of Antiochus defeated this wise project. Auletes was restored through the interest of the celebrated Pompey, and conducted into his capital by Mark Antony, a commander hardly less renowned. After a series of oppressions and cruelties, among which may be mentioned the murder of Berenice, he terminated a shameful reign by an early death,-intrusting his surviving children to the care and tuition of the Roman government.

Among the infants thus left to the protection of the senate, were the famous Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy Dionysius. As soon as these princes came of age, they were raised to the throne, and associated in the government. But their friendship and union were of short continuance; and each having the support of a numerous party, their dissensions almost necessarily terminated in a civil war. Cleopatra was compelled to seek refuge in Syria; soon after which event, Julius Cæsar, who by his victory at Pharsalia had already made himself master of the commonwealth, appeared in Egypt to complete his conquest, and to quell the intestine commotions by which the whole of that kingdom was distracted. She lost no time in repairing to Alexandria, where she was secretly introduced into the presence of the Roman general. This able soldier and politician immediately restored to her the share of power which she had formerly possessed, issuing a decree, in the name of the senate, that Ptolemy Dionysius and his sister Cleopatra should be acknowledged as joint sovereigns of Egypt. The partisans of the young king, being dissatisfied with this arrangement, had recourse to a military stratagem, by which Cæsar and his attendants were nearly destroyed. A war ensued soon afterward, which ended in the death of Ptolemy and the complete establishment of the Romans, not less as conquerors than as guardians of the children of Auletes.

But it was not consistent with Egyptian decorum that

Cleopatra should reign without a colleague; and, therefore, to satisfy the prejudices of the people, her youngest brother, not more than eleven years of age, was placed beside her on the throne. Such a nomination could not be regarded in any other light than as a show of limiting the power of the queen; and even this apparent check on her authority was soon removed by the murder of the child, who fell a victim to the furious passions which at that period dishonoured the descendants of the great Ptolemy.

But the term of their dynasty was now fast approaching. The assassination of the conqueror of Pharsalia, and the subsequent defeat of Mark Antony, raised the fortunes of Octavianus above the reach of the most powerful of his rivals, and at length invested him with the imperial purple, as the acknowledged head of the Roman world. Cleopatra made her escape from his revenge in a voluntary death; for suspecting that he intended to wound her feelings, by assigning to her a place in the train of captives who were to adorn his triumph at Rome, she found means to put an end to her life by the bite of a poisonous reptile. With her ended the line of Grecian sovereigns, which had continued two hundred and ninety-six years.

As a province of the Roman empire, the history of Egypt can hardly be separated from that of the mighty people by whose deputies it was now to be governed. It was, indeed, occasionally disturbed by insurrections, and sometimes even by foreign war; but it was, notwithstanding, retained with a firm grasp both against domestic and external foes, until the decline of power compelled the successors of Augustus to withdraw their legions from the extremities of the empire, to defend the provinces on the Tiber and the Danube. Adrian, in the beginning of the second century, spent two years in Egypt, during which he laboured to revive among the natives the love of letters and the beauties of archi tecture. Severus, too, at a somewhat later period, made e similar visit, when, like his predecessor, he exerted himself to relieve the burdens and improve the condition of the great body of the people. In particular, he countenanced every attempt that was made to repair the ancient monuments, as also to replenish the museums and libraries at Alexandria with books, instruments, and works of art; and, above all, to withdraw the minds of the more contemplative from the

L

dangerous pursuits of magic and the contemptible deceptions of astrology. The reigns of Claudius and of Aurelian were slightly agitated by the pretensions of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, who, as a descendant of the Ptolemies, announced herself the sovereign of Egypt. Her army advanced to the frontiers, and even gained some advantages over the Romans; but her troops being at length steadily opposed by the legions of Syria, she sustained a total defeat, and was carried captive to Rome.

The

When, at a later period, the emperor Probus visited Egypt, he executed many considerable works for the splendour and benefit of the country. The navigation of the Nile, so important to Rome itself, was improved; and temples, bridges, porticoes, and palaces were constructed by the hands of his soldiers, who acted by turns as architects, as engineers, and as husbandmen. On the division of the empire by Diocletian, Egypt was reduced to a very distracted state. Achilleus at Alexandria, and the Blemmyes, a savage race of Ethiopians, defied the Roman arms. emperor, resolved to punish the insurgents, opened the campaign with the siege of Alexandria. He cut off the aqueducts which supplied every quarter of that immense city with water, and pushed his attacks with so much caution and vigour, that at the end of eight months the besieged submitted to the clemency of the conqueror. The fate of Busiris and Coptos was even more melancholy than that of Alexandria. Those proud cities, the former distinguished by its antiquity, the latter enriched by the passage of the Indian trade, were utterly destroyed by the arms of the enraged Diocletian.*

The introduction of Christianity was marked by repeated outrages among the people, and even by such commotions as threatened to shake the stability of the government. The adherents of the old superstition resisted, on some occasions, the destruction of their temples and the contemptuous exposure of their idols; while, in more than one instance, the Christian ministers, with a larger share of zeal than of discretion, insulted their opinions, and even set at defiance the authority of the civil magistrate when interposed to preserve the public peace. But, after the

conversion of Constantine, the power of the church was effectually exerted to co-operate with the provincial rulers in supporting the rights of the empire, and in repelling the inroads of the barbarians from the east and south. Nor was it till a new religion arose in Arabia, and gave birth to a dynasty of warlike sovereigns, that Egypt, wrested from its European conquerors, was forced to receive more arbitrary masters, and submit to a severer yoke. This era, however, constitutes the point in our historical retrospect at which we announced our intention to interrupt the narrative, until we shall have laid before the reader an account of the arts, the literature, and commerce of the ancient Egyptians.

CHAPTER IV.

Mechanical Labours of the Ancient Egyptians.

The Magnitude of Egyptian Edifices-Their supposed Object connected with the Doctrine of the Metempsychosis-Proposal made to Alexander the Great-Lake Maris; its Extent-The Narrative of Herodotus; supported by Diodorus and Pomponius Mela-Opinion that the Nile originally flowed through the Valley of the Dry River-Facts stated by Denon; and by Belzoni-Lake Moris not a Work of ArtThe River of Joseph, and Canals connecting it with the Nile-Pyramids; Account by Herodotus; Researches of Davison; of Caviglia; of Belzoni; Dimensions of Pyramids-Sphinx; Exertions of Caviglia --Monolithic Temple-Tombs-Reflections.

THE history of Egypt presents nothing more wonderful than the magnitude and durability of the public works which were accomplished by her ancient inhabitants. Prodigal of labour and expense, her architects appear to have planned their structures for the admiration of the most distant posterity, and with the view of rendering the fame of their mechanical powers coeval with the existence of the globe itself. It has been suspected, indeed, that the omnipotent spirit of religion mingled with the aspirations of a more earthly ambition in suggesting the intricacies of the Labyrinth, and in realizing the vast conception of the

Pyramids. The preservation of the body in an entire and uncorrupted state during three thousand years, is understood to have been connected with the mythological tenet that the spirit by which it was originally occupied would return to animate its members, and to render them once more the instruments of a moral probation amid the ordinary pursuits of the human race. The mortal remains even of the greatest prince could hardly have been regarded as deserving of the minute care and the sumptuous apparatus which were employed to save them from dissolution, had not the national faith pointed to a renewal of existence in the lapse of ages, when the bodily organs would again become necessary to the exercise of those faculties from which the dignity and enjoyment of man are derived. There can be no doubt, therefore, that Egypt was indebted to the religious speculations of her ancient sages for those sublime works of architecture which still distinguish her above all the other nations of the primitive world.

It must at the same time be acknowledged that, in all countries comparatively rude, vastness of size takes precedence of all other qualities in architectural arrangement. As a proof of this, it will not be denied that even the Pyramids sink into insignificance when compared with an undertaking proposed by Stesicrates to Alexander the Great. Plutarch relates that this projector offered to convert Mount Athos into a statue of the victorious monarch. The left arm was to be the base of a city containing ten thousand inhabitants; while the right was to hold an urn, from which a river was to empty itself into the sea. But our object in this chapter is not to describe the fanciful dreams of a panegyrist, but to give an account of works which were actually effected, and of which the remains continue at the present day to verify at once the existence and the grandeur.

We shall begin with Lake Maris, which, although, upon the whole, it owes more to nature than to art, is nevertheless well worthy of notice, both for its great extent and for its patriotic object. Herodotus, our best authority for its original appearance, informs us that the circumference of this vast sheet of water was three thousand six hundred stadia, or four hundred and fifty miles,-that it stretched from north to south,-and that its greatest depth was about